Guides
Guides and how to operate some of the features and amenities at Aberfall.
🏡 Aberfall Villa Guest & Facility Guide
🚨 Safety, Contact & House Rules
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Urgent Contact: Message Piers any time of day with questions; Piers will answer as soon as he sees it.
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Emergency Equipment: Emergency stuff (Fire extinguisher, first aid kit, charged power block, and wind-up torch) is all under the stairs.
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Pool Room Rule (Moisture): Please keep doors from the pool to the house, and pool to the gym CLOSED to prevent venting moisture into the electrics and furniture of other rooms.
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Pool Room Food & Drink: No food or drink in the pool room, please (unless taking plastic/paper cup drinks to the hot tub).
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Pool Room Use: No Dogs or Shoes in Pool Room please. Feel free to use the sliders provided.
🔊 Audio & Multi-Room Control (Sonos)
This section details how to use the zoned high-quality audio setup that runs throughout the property.
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Streaming Services: Your phones and other devices joined to the house Wi-Fi can immediately stream from apps like Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, and Amazon Music to the Sonos speakers.
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Room Selection: Each zone is labelled in a clear way (e.g., Sonos Kitchen, Sonos Office).
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Grouping Rooms: Download the Sonos app to your devices to regroup any combination of rooms together for synced music across the house, and control each room's volume, playback source, and grouping individually.
Volume Control
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The Sonos speakers have touch controls for volume up/down, play/pause.
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The Sonos Move2 portable rechargeable speaker has a volume bar you swipe your finger left and right along to adjust volume.
Sonos Move2 Portable Voice Control
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The Move2 responds to voice commands like "Hey Sonos play reggae" or "Hey Sonos play Nia Archives."
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This allows you to be in the hot tub, have the speaker nearby say in the shelf unit, and change the music by voice command without needing your phone.
Pool Extension Speakers
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The Sonos Poolzones Amp links to amp-driven wall speakers in the pool, gym, and reading room.
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To Turn ON: Each room has to be turned on by pressing the SAT button on the small white wall box in the respective room.
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Turning OFF: The power button only turns rooms off, not on. Holding the power button turns all rooms off and powers down the amp.
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Each wall box controls the volume up down for its own room speakers. Sonos just provides the content stream not volume control.
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Audio Input Note: The third input, the Sat input on the pool block multi-room system, equals Sonos. It's what you need.
🎬 Home Cinema Operation
Detailed instructions for accessing the 12-speaker Atmos soundstage and video sources.
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Core System: The Yamaha amp drives the Atmos soundstage and routes video from the Apple streaming box, disc player, and Chromecast. This setup allows for Atmos sound.
Power On Instructions
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Simple Streaming: Put the Apple TV remote in your hand; it is the only remote you need to take for streaming. It also does amp volume.
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Sequence: Press power on the Yamaha amp (it should say AppleSetTopBox). Press green power on the Sony remote and leave it on the mantel, so the TV functions as a monitor. Use the Apple remote to access all content.
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TV Input: The TV should be set to input HDMI 3 (ARC) to get the picture from the Yamaha Amp.
Input Scenes (Controlled by Yamaha Amp)
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Scene 3 (Primary Streaming): Apple Streaming Box. Access Apple TV+, Disney, Prime, BBC iPlayer, YouTube, CH4, ITVX, Channel5, Netflix etc. Everything should be ready & set up to stream.
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Scene 1 (Disc Player): Use the Panasonic Remote to control disc playback. (600 or so movies on disc in the drawer units).
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Scene 2: Sonos Music Input (Sonos Cinema Amp).
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Scene 4: Cinema Chromecast (Casting content from a laptop, pad or phone).
Apple Remote Instructions
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This is the neat little black remote with the cord strap.
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The white ringed button is to turn on or go back/up.
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Swipe to move selection, depress (without lifting finger) to click selection.
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The screen button gives a recent programs playback menu, and pressing it again cycles to installed apps page.
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You can voice search for content using the microphone button. Voice search is context-based (searches Apple unless you are directly in the type to search box of a particular app, e.g., Netflix).
🍴 Supplies & Amenities
This is a functioning home and typically well stocked for incidentals to make for a pleasant stay.
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Kitchen: Look around—you probably have anything you can think of, from waffle irons to cake tins to ice cream scoops to juicers to panini presses. Good stocks of all staple ingredients, spices, oils, vinegar, tamari, condiments, tea, coffee, different types of milk etc.
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Bedrooms: Hair dryers, tongs, and curlers are in various places (e.g., the grey chest in Bed 2).
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Bed 2 also has an iron, two ironing boards, and a drying rack some located under the sprung lift-up bed.
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Utility Room: Has a good selection of every cleaning product you might need in the grey chest. Plenty more supplies are available under the sinks too.
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Hallway Grey Chest: Contains some gloves hats and scarves, a spare dog lead, doggie doo bags, mosquito spray, and various other useful items.
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Reading Room Cupboard (by the pool): Has a ton of appliances, from juicers to vitamix kitchen robots.
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Summerhouse Annex: Has many board games. More books.